For 21 days, students in Merry Lea’s Master of Arts in Environmental Education learn about a subtropical ecosystem and then work with six elementary schools to get kids outside and connect them to their environment. Every year, I am amazed by how much they absorb.
Luke Gascho, former director of Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College, is the recipient of the 2019 Howard Michaud Award from the Environmental Education Association of Indiana.
Goshen College’s nursing programs have recently been recognized by multiple online outlets for program excellence.
Although the ethics around eating meat can be polarized, experiencing how our food comes to us—and the processes and relationships around it—can help us understand our places, others and ourselves.
Ben Friesen can be described in many ways: father, husband, potter, writer, miner, teacher, principal, factory worker, missionary, traveller, a man of faith, student and nurse. But come May 28, Friesen will add one more title to his already extensive list: graduate of Goshen College’s master of science in nursing program.
Luke Gascho is a professor in the Sustainability and Environmental Affairs Education Department at Goshen College and the executive director of Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center.
Located near scenic Wolf Lake in Indiana, Merry Lea boasts geological riches of an unusually wide variety such as peat bogs, a marl pit and glacial gravel formations. Merry Lea is also home to wetland, prairie, and savanna restorations and participates in sustainable agriculture.
For some students, the prospect of a course in the Bahamas clinches the decision to attend Merry Lea’s Master of Arts in Environmental Education program. For Ali Sanders, the course also settled her career direction.
Students in Merry Lea’s Master’s in Environmental Education program discuss vexing social problems in their Environmental Issues and History class. They prepare presentations on topics like micro-plastics and nuclear disasters. All the same, students say they find hope in the course.
About once a month, 24 students from the Goshen College Laboratory Kindergarten class — a partnership between the college’s education department and Goshen Community Schools — spend the day climbing trees, building shelters and making mud pies in Witmer Woods, through Merry Lea’s Kinderforest program, the first of its kind in Goshen.
